About TISE

1. provide high quality education in the areas of traffic engineering, air transportation, civil engineering materials, transportation constructed facilities, transportation planning, logistics engineering, rail and transit, safety, and transportation systems analysis;
2. facilitate student learning and skill development, and encourage student critical thinking in all of the aforementioned areas;
3. advance the state of the knowledge in all transportation infrastructure and systems engineering by sustaining our leadership in research and technology development in some fields and improve in others; and
4. conduct outreach activities to disseminate our research findings nationally and internationally and contribute to the economic development of the Commonwealth and the nation.

The Program provides unique graduate study and research opportunities. The program includes all aspects of planning, design, construction, operation, management, and rehabilitation of transportation infrastructure and systems. As its name suggests, TISE Program consists of 2 main sections, namely, Infrastructure and Systems.

The main focus of the Infrastructure section is on the life-cycle performance of the civil engineering infrastructure including the performance of Portland cement concrete, hot-mix asphalt and composites; nondestructive evaluation; and transportation infrastructure performance. The research activities include theoretical analysis, laboratory hands-or-studies, and field evaluation. Throughout the program, emphasis is placed on the performance of infrastructure components through the application of bridge and pavement management systems, evolution of new materials, forensic engineering, condition assessment technologies, maintenance, protection and rehabilitation of highway structures, materials deterioration, and service life prediction.

The main focus of the System section is on transportation infrastructure capacity management versus capacity expansion. This implies that, rather than building new lanes and runways, transportation engineers are focusing increasingly on making better use of the transportation infrastructure that is already available. This requires the application of advanced technologies to monitor, optimize, and control traffic flows to make them operate more efficiently.